Financial institutions provide account services to account holders using a variety of interfaces, such as web interfaces, tellers and automated teller machines (ATMs). These interfaces allow for multiple access points and otherwise facilitate access to one or more accounts held by the account holders. Similarly educational institutions provide account services to students, faculty, staff, alumni or others with an appropriate relationship with the university. The accounts can be typically accessed through web interfaces or through computers (e.g., specialized computer kiosks) provided by the educational institution. Such computers require an investment in initial funding and maintenance costs by the educational institution.
Users with an account at both a financial institution and an educational institution often desire to move funds from one account to the other. Such transfer can be difficult to effect because the individual typically needs to access the accounts separately and use some mechanism to transfer the funds between the accounts. For instance, some educational institutions allow for funds to be deposited in an account through checks, credit cards and cash deposits. Such methods often require the individual to access both accounts individually (e.g., to withdraw cash for depositing in another account) or to deal directly with a person who accepts the transfer of funds. Directly dealing with a person often limits the account holder to normal business hours and can cost the institution funds because the institution pays for the employees to process the account transfers.
These and other issues have presented challenges to the implementation of accounts held by users at financial and educational institutions.
While the invention is amenable to various modifications and alternative forms, specifics thereof have been shown by way of example in the drawings and will be described in detail. It should be understood, however, that the intention is not to limit the invention to the particular embodiments described. On the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the invention.